Carsqa.com, the para-site pilloried by TTAC for more than blatant copyright infringement, appears to be off-line. Good riddance. There is more work to do.
Carsqa was one of the many sites that systematically and apparently automatically steal stories from major car sites. They sell their ad space to Google and other advertisers, such as Amazon. They fool search engines by claiming they have permanent authors who write original content.
Carsqa took content off Car & Driver, TTAC, and other sites, they put the content under (most likely assumed) names of their authors, they even asserted copyright for the product of their information highway robbery. This needs to stop and be stopped.
This is not a crusade against fair use. When we quote other sites, we name them, we link to them, we only embed quotations into stories we write. TTAC is a high traffic site, and our links usually are appreciated. We likewise appreciate the traffic we receive from other sites that adhere to the same principles. Para-sites don’t have principles.
TTAC is free. It is paid by advertising. If other sites can steal our content with impunity, they can sell the advertising space for fractions of what a quality site would charge. To write a single story like the one about a kei car rolling off the lines did cost me two days and more than $500 in expenses. A para-site could live and continue stealing for several years on $500. Why should we continue spending time and money for quality articles if we can steal them? Why should we work at all, if we can simply rob hardworking people?
This is worse than brand piracy, and it turns the world-wide web into a world-wide China. Actually, these days, a copyright is better protected in China than on a server farm in California.
Carsqa is just one of thousands para-sites that leech off the hard work of authors. Para-sites eat you alive and ruin the Internet. We encourage all hard-working authors not to feed the para-sites. We also encourage advertisers not to advertise on para-sites. Doing so would set a bad precedent for the intellectual property policy of the advertisers. If you want us to buy the book, don’t advertise it on para-sites.
I totally agree with you on this topic Bertel. The ‘Net is the Wild West for writers and there appears to be little or no reason for thieves not to steal writers’ intellectual property. These soulless weasels have pilfered other people’s material with no consequences for their blatant larceny.Keep up the attack on these blood-sucking lowlifes.
I’m sure TTAC’s corporate parent has U.S. lawyers. A Digital Millennium Copyright Act take-down notice, copied to whomever is hosting the site, usually does the trick, assuming its in the U.S. If it’s elsewhere, then the answer is “it depends.”
Judging from the comments of most of the B&B here, I’d be very surprised if there’s even a significant minority who don’t approve of TTAC’s defense of its intellectual property.
The one’s I truly despise are website like Autospies with (IMHO) a ‘pseudo’ legit interface.
What I find amusing is Autopsy’s way of writing snarky headlines, such as “Nissan Sales Catapult 31.2% In May – Infiniti Considers Life Support After Dropping 25.4%” – to be followed by Nissan’s very unsnarky press release.
How about the amount of times they slam headlines like ‘ One of the last legitimate websites TTAC confirms how legit we are by confirming something we said 2 minutes ago’
A small victory, but one, nonetheless.